Too fast. I need help.

[DuSTman 0]

I am having problems with many games running under windows 2000, that most people seem not to have. I common recurring problem is that for some reason, unknown to me, the timing in most games is buggered. Half-life, GLquake1, Unreal and tournament, Homeworld, all running too fast (And by this i mean that everything in the games happens too fast, the timing routines seem screwed up.)

 

I posted about this in the w2000 games newsgroup and one other person was having the same problem. The hardware that is common to both our systems are AMD K6-3s (mine 450MHz, his 400) and a Gigabyte GA-5AX motherboard.

 

My system:

 

AMD K6-3-450

GA-5AX

Guillemot maxigamer phoenix(voodoo banshee)

SB Live!Player 1024

 

Anyone got any idea about this? This seems to be quite an esoteric problem, so i was wondering if no-one knows how to solve it that it is a bug in wither the BIOS, or Win2000s timing code.

 

Any ideas?

 

DuSTman

[Arin 0]

my friend has that problem in glquake1, and my other friend had that in 98 with just quake1, and i had a problem with my mx300 where the sound in half life was running to high pitched and fast. that is all i know. I dont really know if that can help at all. prob not, just lettin you know that i have heard of it before.

[ledzeppel 0]

I can't imagine those games running TOO fast on your Banshee card. Very strange problem. Never heard of it or seen it. I'll look into it for you.

[DuSTman 0]

Yeah. It's more that the timing is buggered, It's not that the frame rates too high. Just.. too fast.

 

I tested how much faster by recording a demo in half life, running it oin another OS (the timing in which works properly), and timiing it on windows 2000.

 

Strangely enough, the demo ran damn near exactly twice as fast as it should have done on the 2000 test.

 

wierd

[Toby 0]

Hi there..

 

I've got the solution for your problems but it ain't a very funny one. I got the same mainboard as you with a K6-III~400Mhz, the thing is that Win2k (under F3-bios) recognise the CPU as K6-III~200Mhz(look in the system information) during installation and this can NOT be changed later.

 

Solution#1: Flash your BIOS with the old 1.3 and reinstall.(You can flash back to F3 after installation)

 

Solution#2: Create the 4boot-disks edit the file TXTSETUP.SIF on first bootdisk. Under [ACPIOptions] change the line ACPIEnable = 2 to ACPIEnable = 0 this way you dont have to flash back to 1.5, Boot from the disks and reinstall...

 

The thing is that under the F3 BIOS Win2k is performing a ACPI-installation, and while doing so detects the wrong CPU-speed !

 

This is a MAJOR BUG in the F3-BIOS, but NO UPDATES from Gigabyte. This took about 15-20 installations to figure out, you will loose the soft-shutdown, but i do work...

 

I WILL NEVER BUY A GIGABYTE BOARD AGAIN !!!

 

Good luck.

 

(By the way do anyone no if you can edit some of the *.ini, *.txt files to set the CPU-speed manually ?, been looking but can't find an entry for it)

 

// Toby

[DuSTman 0]

God damn.

 

I had deduced that it had something to do with the mobo/cpu.

 

Yeah. That sucker reports as a 266 MHz.

 

I don't think i will bother flashing it, for one because i'd have to install DOS for that and everything.

 

No. If gigabyte wants to do that to me that board is going to find it's way into my microwave.

 

What's a good replacement socky 7 board?

 

DuST

[Preacher 0]

If what Toby suggests is disabling ACPI support of Win2000, you can do that without flashing your BIOS or reinstalling the OS.

 

Right click on "My Computer" and choose "Properties". Go to the "Hardware" tab and choose "Device Manager...".In the window appearing, click on the "+" on the left side of "Computer". The tree deflates and you should be able to read something like "Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) PC".

Right click on it and choose "Properties". Go to the "Driver" tab and select "Update Driver". Click "Next". Choose "Display a list of the known drivers..." and click "Next". The "Select a device driver" window should pop up. Mark the "Show all hardware of this device class" line. In the "Models" row, select "Standard PC". Click "Next" twice to install the different drivers and then "Finish" to complete installation. Resart your machine.

 

Again, if what Toby suggests is disabling ACPI support, here´s how to do it without flashing BIOSes or reinstalling OSes

[Toby 0]

Again..

 

The sad thing is that the CPU-speed is detected during the installation so changing your computer type afterwards won't do the trick...

 

// Toby

[DuSTman 0]

The thing with this is that it means that with windows 2000 the OS must be re-installed when a processor is upgraded, which, AFAIK, never used to be the case in the older operating systems.

 

Just seems like a bad thing to do, only taking a processor speed value that you'll use for timing the one time the OS is installed..

 

A bit wierd.

[Toby 0]

Hi..

 

Thing is that no matter what BIOS your´re using, if you you got the exact same CPU (speed, type) Win2k will not pay it any attention it will not look for a "change" and try to "redetect" the CPU.

But if you get a new CPU which is different, Win2k will get new info from BIOS, realize change in hardware and try to detect it.

 

At least this is what I came up with when I was testing with an older CPU (K6~233)...

 

// Toby